Bitcoin Forum

Google searches recently displayed results and ads for at least three phishing schemes masquerading as the Uniswap decentralized exchange.

BeinCrypto Russia discovered that the world’s most popular search engine was showing results for (and even advertising) scams pretending to be the Uniswap platform.

Earlier today, searching for ‘Uniswap’ in Google resulted in ads for fake sites with the following domains:

https://i.imgur.com/zhwzElu.png

https://beincrypto.com/google-advertises-uniswap-phishing-scams/


You can find more details about these scam domains in the scams section thread [SCAM] [PHISHING] 3 Fake Uniswap website PLEASE REPORT! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267006.0).
Where the witcher_sense (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267006.0) user has already provided data.

Just simply report it if you find some malicious Google Ads popping around. Those criminals are really doing everything to circumvent Google's policy on this. And this is what we call cloaking, it's just it is very rampant today because it's very easy for scammers to make money through this method.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en

And for sure this will help google to filter malicious program or ads that has been displayed. Google pretty sure knows about that they had been adding malicious program but since they are paying they just accept it and then if someone will going to report then they can have the reason to remove it then. So, in order to help google remove this kind of malicious program then it is better that we should be helping to report the malicious program. One can start sharing malicious program here in the forum. You can make a list here and well help out to report it so that it can be easily reached out to google admin.

Any companies, websites, and even facebook pages that can be searched through google can have themselves be the first page to pop-up in search results as an advertisement. Hence, it wasn't justified as Google advertising such scams, they are paid to do it, and it is the client's privacy rights not to be checked by google in its validity and legitimacy.

Also, Better post this on Scam Accusation Board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0) to gain more support in reporting. thanks! Reporting it now..

That has been posted by @witcher_sense as OP mentioned on his thread

---

I'm not surprised again about this case, because there are so many phishing on google showed in the first result. Even has been reported, google still repeating their mistake till now. Not sure how long this case will be exist. This is another reason why Mozilla, Duckduckgo, and Tor is better than Chrome.

Not shocking cause Uniswap is really in demand right now. A lots of defi project has swarming the social media and every one of them are hoping to get listed on this market. Coincides to the interest of traders to use uniswap. Of course they always search uniswap and these scammers are taking advantage that some of the traders might click on their site instead the original.

Why the heck, Google allowed these ads to pop on the search engine when type uniswap? Is there really no solution to restrict malicious site. Or only it will gone if reported already.

I kind of expected that Google would do something about this possible scam without hurting their Google ads or something related to that. I know that if there is someone who would report, it would be excluded right away, and the owner will be notified, but I’m pretty sure they know that it’s going to get taken down, but for how long?

This type of event is not new to the Internet, and they are just making smart ways to market it more even though it’s a negative thing. Be careful with this type of scams.

Google is completely powerless, or rather disinterested, when it comes to controlling advertised content - and seems to be leaving everything in the hands of its not-so-intelligent artificial intelligence. Until this approach changes, users are left with only one very effective defense - and that is to install an ad-blocker in their browsers, and in that way the ads will be hidden and thus the danger no longer exists.

It may sound strange, but searching for terms that have something to do with crypto using Google search is a real minefield for inexperienced users, but all dirty players are counting on it. When you realize that Google is not your friend then the Internet will become a much safer place for you.

They are paying for that spot on the search bar, and if you think that it is a malicious website, just report it to Google and it will be promptly taken down after garnering similar reports. That's just the way it goes for Google ads for the past few years, and if that's not enough for you, you might even see rated-X ads on family-friendly website lingering around every now and then.

It's just funny that Google had been releasing statements against scam sites and whatnot but keeps on placing such ads without doing a background check on who pays for what.

Unless google reviews the method they use before accepting ads for promotions, it will be difficult to totally eradicate these scam ads. Many of the scammers have seen and realize how desperate people are to make money from crypto and they keep on looking for a way out to get phishing and scam running even on Youtubes. Scam promotion through ads on twitter is what I have not seen so maybe they can borrow a leave from twitter to overcome such scams

Google might have made a mistake publishing these scam exchanges. Before someone get caught into these scams someone needs to report it to the Google authority. Google needs to do some screening before publishing any promotion on the search engine. These days lots and lots of ads pop out of the webpages visited. Also the recommendation normally go upon the much searched words. This way crypto people will easily get caught on these scams.

This is not Google's fault, anyone can place an advertisement on Google by using Google Adwords. Google does not take any moral responsibilities for advertisements on its platforms. It is the responsibility of the community in this case us to report such scams and spams to Google so that they can remove it.

Creating an article on this issue does not mean anything significant as then this website needs to create a lot of articles related to Youtube scams.

The thing is that the google algorithm is not yet so optimized that it can detect and remove these malicious phishing ads quickly.
Google still depends on us to report the ads so that they can use that information to create a filter and allow only genuine ads on it's platform.
So it is our responsibility to be aware of such phishing ads. Besides that we should only be clicking on the links we want to visit on the internet.
Just entering any site can really be dangerous sometimes.

No wonder, The companies though are open to reports and take actions.

Community reports will bring big help to make sure that this kind of advertisement will be check and remove after getting notice,.

Google will take actions after learning about this, the control though is on their hands and if there's a lots of reports
in a short period of time it can be removed.

If these phishing swapping scam sites were able to advertise on google then probably some crypto can also be advertised on google.  This must be a good sign for all crypto companies. I guess google isn't tightening cryptocurrency advertisers anymore.  I wouldn't want to get advertisers excited but I hope someone confirms this though.

Google should hire more crypto-savvy people to weed out these scams. For someone who haven't even heard about uniswap it's nearly impossible to distinguish scam from a real thing without people reporting them.

I'm glad I have ads blocked and also will never use uniswap or any DeFi which I find quite dangerous. Also I don't condone the attitude of some influencers that are forcing people to sell their BTC and buy random ERC20 tokens which would provide some sort of returns for lending. I would not risk with any DeFi and hopefully not many will.

This is not the first time this happens on google. They just do not filter which ad contains phising or scam and which does not. Report if you find something strange and perhaps after a week they will look it up.

Always use ad-block and avoid google if possible.

I was like WHAT? Then I saw it was google and meh, It's google man. I wouldn't even doubt it if they started advertising hacking sites all over the place. They don't really look at those that ask for advertisements intensively enough to detect every single scam site but they do have an algorithm for at least detecting the more obvious ones. This is why mostly you should never trust extensions and the likes in Google, and if you were to open up a site from an ad, better look it up and then open it from there.

Just report it and get over it. Luckily, google at least accepts reports for whatever scam sites we say, though I don't really know how much of an research they do with reports before actually banning the sites from being advertised. They should probably add some sort of scam list that they could place somewhere in their search engine webpage. Or make it an ad.

Using some ad-block extensions or softwares is kinda helpful for this kind of scam/phishing or fake advertisement.
But I don't agree that we should always use ad-block. Yes, ads are annoying but we should also respect some authors/writers or content creators which they can only earn profits by advertisements on their contents.

They don't need to have crypto-savvy people to filter these out. It's just that scams in general(not only crypto scams) can easily slip through their automated system by simply not using crypto-related keywords. Unless they improve their software significantly to be good enough to spot these scams one way or another, the only sure-fire way is to have them manually approve ads; which as we know is very unfeasible due to Google's size.

Like I said before in another topic related to google ads:

You can always turn off the ad-block if you want to support a content creator. I have a problem with advertisements and marketing in general as the techniques they use are shady, creating needs to consumers that wouldn't exist otherwise, promoting certain behavioral patterns and inflating prices of the advertised products. I do not even watch television for more than a decade and a major reason is this.
The first time I used an ad-block extension I felt liberated and never stopped using them. They update their filters occasionally and are adding websites containing malicious code and also blocking web crypto-miners that might do damage to our systems. Saved me many times.

As soon as you saw this, please report those phishing scams that can lure and fool people to get scammed easily.

This scams never have a room for this websites where people can easily access them in just one click. These links can possibly harm your computer. Suspicious programs should be avoided and reported as soon as you find out that their legitimacy is a fraud. For Google to become aware about these software that can destroy their platform, we should tell them about these phishing scams or fake links so people will become also aware about this schemes. Google ad-blocker is free.  ;)

Google is not responsible for advertising, but it looks like the ad could be reported as a scam, I also often see it on google search, it's a shame if many newbies fall into the trap and lose their money, this should continue to be reported on this forum for telling beginners not to be fooled, all I know is that their domains are uniswap.info and uniswap.org

Youtube and Google are currently truly a target for scammers. I get completely idiotic messages about 800% crypto gains on Instagram and Linkedin but that ads go overboard since uneducated people could easily fall for it

Thank you for sharing this. It's taking advantage of the opportunity and a perfect excuse that they have a lot of things to look at. I tried having to market using Google ads but had a hard time setting up because of the requirements. I'm curious to how they were able to pass through all of that ???

Personally, I have google ads blocked by default, because I don't want to accidently click shitty scams websites every time I search for cryptocurrency related topics. I have been using Internet Explorer on purpose in order to find fraudulent websites like three ones above, but many people use privacy-oriented Brave Browser, for example, which doesn't block google ads whatsoever! If newbie still haven't download Firefox with uBlock installed, he is going to fall victim to scam. Imagine newbie who has heard about Uniswap, but at the same time he has no idea what official website address is, he is trying to search for it using shitty Brave Browser and loses all his money, adoption of Bitcoin is slowed again, Bitcoin is scam.

It's no longer appearing on my end, so maybe Google has taken this Uniswap phishing hiding on as ads on their platform.

So it will be a continuous mouse and game for us, criminals create malicious ads, we crypto enthusiasts saw it, report it to Google so that it will be taken down immediately. So I advise everyone to be very vigilant in fighting those cyber criminals. Reporting will only take a few minutes of our time, and it can save hundred of noobs out there.

This is not the first time there is a complaint regarding google showing phishing sites in their search results or taking advertisement from Phishing scammers, years ago there was a complaint regarding that and they claimed that they usually do not monitor the sites before advertising them and then they maintained that they will be monitoring them and will remove those and we are once again seeing those and the only option is to never trust random google searches and if you find them just report it hoping that it will be taken down.

This isn't surprising to me. I am not a tech guy, but I don't see any way to prevent phishing advertisements by Google without report. Probably they use AI or something like this to manage advertisements, so how they would know this is a phishing site? Even a human how would know if he isn't familiar with the original site? So we can't expect from Google not to advertise phishing links. Rather than we have to teach yourself how we can save us from such as scam attempts. And we should report immediately once we found such as phishing advertisements.

It is not that hard to overcome their detection algorithm and so is the reason they used to remove billions of advertisement in the past and in that over millions of phishing sites and most of the time you need to report them before google taking any action against them. The scammers are getting smart as they are creating exact replica to carry out their phishing attempts and anyone who has not bookmarked the original site will get fooled.

Everyone should make sure that you are indeed viewing the genuine website and bookmark those rather than relying on searches.

Report here manually if you find any phishing sites  (https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en)

This is maybe there are many phishing websites in the google results that they could have been flagged after it showed in the searches and advertisement that has been running for a long time that is a scam. If  they are doing this manually at the first place they could monitor each website that they are advertising, but the case is they are reliant on their technology, nothing will happen unless several reports have been submitted. I'm not into ad-blockers to avoid these kind of adverts coz it has a significant effect on the loading speed, it will use a bit of a ram which low rams might have difficulty in loading pages.

Could be, but google has a good reputation as the most people know of it, google is the leading tech company and that's a reason why people are into google's hand. But if you have longed to the internet you'll know that every thing is dangerous, even clicking a picture  ;)

Google will just keep on posting ads that they think there is money on it, but they would definitely be waiting for a report on that site so they would block it on their ads, it is surely our part in taking actions in reporting malicious site like these they will just throw in sites like these that they think they can milk money from, And Scammer is doing their best in manipulating even a simple blog post, or ads on a messenger game sometimes can be an example.

This is the case every time you search for known sites, especially anything related to cryptocurrencies. Back then, I remember they also advertise some sites that pay you to answer surveys but unfortunately the one they are recommending on their advertising banner was a scam survey site that does not pay. All I did was report it in our local forum and they recommend to report it to google as well to prevent others from getting scam. Have you tried to answer those annoying surveys and in the end they don't even pay you a dime from helping them to the data they need? Well, how about me I wasted 2 hours back then just to be scammed by that site that I thought was legit because it was recommended by google at the top of the search results. It's the same as yours, we better report it as soon as possible.

I am not surprised to know that Google Searching often displays ads from phishing sites, which happened to Uniswap exchange,
happens frequently on other sites too. And what makes me surprised is that several times Google did the cleaning, other phishing
sites will appear. If like this Google continues to look powerless, in the end we ourselves must be more be careful when clicking
websites.

You can just replace your title with Google advertises * Phishing Scams.

There are Google ads for a huge number of different phishing scams.

If you type in practically any cryptocurrency wallet, exchange, or trading platform, you'll likely find phishing sites positioned in the ad slot, especially on other search engines.

There's no point making a thread about it, since it's a general issue not specific to a single targeted platform. 

Wow, this is very sad. People often click on those advertised links, especially those who aren't very confident Internet users (they fail to see the difference between the real first search result and the advertised one). And at some point Google banned all crypto-related ads, just so that then they advertise scammers? This is irresponsible of them, minimal research on who's buying the ads must be done by people working for Google. They shouldn't rely on people reporting bad websites, especially since it doesn't just take one person reporting the ad so that is stops being advertised  :-[

But this shouldn't be in the users hands, Google should verify the sites before they advertise them, they should have filters to avoid scams. Because while we report them tons of users get scammed.

And the sad part is they will end blocking all kind of crypto promothins thinking all of them are scam, they always take the easy way.

There are also few cases that youtube also advertises scam and uses popular people to scam people, Even Steve Wozniak sues youtube for using his name in the Bitcoin advertisement scam, usually, the scam goes like this, you will send any amount and it will be sent double, I don't know what is the terms and regulation when putting an ad on youtube but it will surely affect their reputation if they keep putting that kind of ads.

https://news.bitcoin.com/steve-wozniak-sues-youtube-google-bitcoin-giveaway-scam/

And that's what we have been calling them, to be strict on their policies, but since those scammers are paying them, so they obviously give them a free pass for like a day or two before they take them down.

On the other hand, what we can do is to report them, so that they will have the audacity to look at it and swiftly remove it. Otherwise, if no one will report, then they won't take actions. And so far this has been the trend. They won't initiate anything on their end, sad to say.

We can’t really blame Google for this, they won’t be able to fish out all the scammers. It’s up to people to be very careful, there are thousands of these cloaked scammers (if not millions of them) so we have to be very careful, and Google always provides an option for people to report ads that look suspicious, so when you see anyone you think is a scam, it would be good if you report them, that way their attention would be drawn to it and they will take them down.

Some people would just screenshot things like these and post, instead of reporting them. If you just screenshot without reporting them, then it’s of no need. In fact it would be best you simply report them and take no screenshot, that way it will be taken down for good and nobody stands a risk of falling for it.

Google is getting payments from advertisements. They have to put it in there. It's normal, many other platforms,  most likely like facebook & youtube, there are advertisements there that are really suspicious and untrustworthy.  

It's a flaw from these platforms that has the need to be addressed. They should tighten their policies on their advertised spaces to avoid spreading frauds.

I do not think google is to be held accountable for the content it currently hosts as it is only a platform that people levergae on. The content on google servers are put in by people and not by google so google is not to be blamed for the shortcomings. but people should be aware of what they are about to get involved in and get remedy as to that effect.

Yes google is just a marketplace. But they need to have a swift system to respond to any scam on their platform. Though they have a report option on search ads, ads and youtube videos but they never quickly respond to the report. Scam youtube video pretending to be a live giveaway by popular person or company runs for hours and sometimes days before being pulled of due to reports.

Indeed, because Google receives payment for the content they advertise. Is it true ?
We probably also dont expect that Google should be held responsible for phishing scam, but at least they should be set up to analyze and review the ads they show even if they are paid for.

Still a few hours ago the ads were on Google because I checked them while reading this thread to find out what was going on with Uniswap.

As we can see, this BeInCrypto article has reviewed what happened two days ago.
It is estimated that the perpetrators of the fraud took 1.5 ETH.
Unfortunately the criminals obtained the private key or seed phrase from the victims.

Google has not made any statement in this regard.
Google should definitely improve its Google Adsense product and check the vulnerability that we have observed and make it more secure because anyone can illegally profit without Google being able to stop it before committing the fraud.

https://beincrypto.com/google-advertises-uniswap-phishing-scams/
  (https://beincrypto.com/google-advertises-uniswap-phishing-scams/)

We should really make our move and have a better reputation so that we can easily manipulate something like this because if these kind of problem won't get manipulated, we are the one the will be in problem and other people will surely say bad things about us and that will be a bad thing for us because it will make our reputation worst that might also be the reason of not not occuring of mass adaptation. We all know that all of us are waiting for mass adaptation so we should really make a move.

Could it be that Google doesn't know about the scam because there has been no reporting of it? Especially regarding ads, maybe it's also because the system is running so it can't detect quickly whether the site is a scam or not.
The easiest thing to do is report it to Google Support. Usually Google will review it and will immediately take down the ad if it is proven.
But thanks for informing us here. It means that we can report it to Google in order to avoid people to be scammed.

This is not the first time that Google lists the scam sites in their advertisement. It makes sense because that is system and technology. Where there may be some information missing to track first withou6bany report from the users. Every day they may offer various google ads. So that they still promote advertisement for some scams may be still there.
That is why this is our way to make a report for it. It can help Google to review again and decide the best decision for the ads scam.

Seems that somebody already reported those phishing uniswap sites as when you search in google, they are not there anymore. Kudos to those who reported them and not just taking the screenshot to share to others. I believe if we will report immediately those possible scam/phishing site to goole, we will lessen individuals that will be victimized by these scammers.

Anyone of us can report a suspected or confirmed phishing site here- An easy peasy task to avoid further victims of their fraudulent activities.

https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en

https://i.postimg.cc/CxxYp9Rf/Screen-Shot-2020-08-12-at-8-04-13-AM.png

It was shown that it was am ADS. If it wasn't reported as a "phishing" and malicious ads or wrbsites, google will still continue accepting such ads from uniswap. And it's not Google's fault it was system geneated to show it priority at above page whenever you search for something. It's just that if it continue to pop up and this is surely a scam, there is still a chance that they may invite some victims amd scam more.

I've searched using the keyword "uniswap" and there's this one result for the ads. The link is


And after checking it, it's a new website that's more of a restaurant but with those "lorem ipsum" means that this website hasn't finished yet. The website was made a few days ago and I think they'll also use it for faking customers as a uniswap.

The phishing scams that often occur on Google Advertise are not entirely the fault of Google. Because there are so many scam
websites in circulation, there is no way Google can solve it quickly if it doesn't get help from our reports. So if we find suspicious
sites on google advertise, you should immediately report it to google so that it is followed up immediately, not just sharing screenshots
of the website scams on forums or social media. This will only create panic and not solve the problem.

now i know why google provide an option to report an ad . maybe your right because they are a top company and many people are advertising on them .
providing screenshots can add a support to your report  . giving warning to others on social media is also helpful but you should follow the same protocol .

I'm not really aware of the decentralized exchange named uniswap, I heard it once from my friends and also after I saw this thread I searched for it. google search produces results from uniswap.org, appuniswop.org, and uniswap.info.

Differentiating these results, I find it too confusing to see which site is the legit one because their UI theme color is the same, but the design is different especially the font and font size.

I asked my friends to clarify this. So my advise is to report these ads because google themselves might be confused which one is the original.

someone needs to be very observant this days, the rate at which all this scammers are growing is very alarming, imagine if someone don't really know the difference in this addresses will just find themselves in a phishing site instead of the real site, i hope no one fall victim of this people.

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Thank you op for pointing this out honestly,  I am not very familiar with this site and I would have fall a victim had it not be for post like this warning people about such danger, you did the right thing letting innocent people like me be aware of this, scammers are always cooking up new ways to scam.

As long it does pay then that would surely counts and among all of the ads that are trying to register then they wont really have that much time nor effort on filtering which one is
true and which one is just phishing.This had been always an issue on this search engine but somewhat we can really give out reports to taken down such phishing site.

Its not actually surprising to see these sites because everytime a thing do hypes up or did really become a trend or being talked in town then expect for these
criminal minds to take advantage on it.

This is why we do see lots of phishing which they do really try hard to make money out of those fools who do heavily rely on results of a simple google search.

They should screen or make verification before take action reports so many investors are already scammed, but since people who advertised on Google ads are verified they can open a complain ticket and ask who are the people who put these ads, of course provided they are using their own credentials, this is another one of those planned scamming.